Tremble dance
Encyclopedia
A tremble dance is a dance performed by forager honey bee
s of the species Apis mellifera to recruit more receiver honey bees to collect nectar from the workers
.
The tremble dance was first described by Karl von Frisch
in the 1920s (who was also first to describe the waggle dance
), but no light was shed on its function until 1993 when Wolfgang Kirschner discovered that, when performed, the dance stopped nearby workers from flying to gather more nectar.
The tremble dance of the honeybee is similar to the waggle dance
, but is used by a forager when the foraging bee perceives a long delay in unloading its nectar or a shortage of receiver bees, sometimes due to low numbers of receiver bees. It may also spread the scent released during the forager's waggle dance. Like the waggle dance, the tremble dance is likely one of two "primary regulation mechanisms" for regulating bee colony behavior at the group level, and one of four or five observed mechanisms known to be used by honeybees to change the task allocation among worker bees. The consumption of ethanol
by foraging bees has been shown to increase the occurrence of the tremble dance while decreasing the occurrence of the waggle dance.
Honey bee
Honey bees are a subset of bees in the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis...
s of the species Apis mellifera to recruit more receiver honey bees to collect nectar from the workers
Worker bee
A Worker bee is any female eusocial bee that lacks the full reproductive capacity of the colony's queen bee; under most circumstances, this is correlated to an increase in certain non-reproductive activities relative to a queen, as well...
.
The tremble dance was first described by Karl von Frisch
Karl von Frisch
Karl Ritter von Frisch was an Austrian ethologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, along with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz....
in the 1920s (who was also first to describe the waggle dance
Waggle dance
Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share with their hive mates information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water...
), but no light was shed on its function until 1993 when Wolfgang Kirschner discovered that, when performed, the dance stopped nearby workers from flying to gather more nectar.
The tremble dance of the honeybee is similar to the waggle dance
Waggle dance
Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share with their hive mates information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water...
, but is used by a forager when the foraging bee perceives a long delay in unloading its nectar or a shortage of receiver bees, sometimes due to low numbers of receiver bees. It may also spread the scent released during the forager's waggle dance. Like the waggle dance, the tremble dance is likely one of two "primary regulation mechanisms" for regulating bee colony behavior at the group level, and one of four or five observed mechanisms known to be used by honeybees to change the task allocation among worker bees. The consumption of ethanol
Ethanol
Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...
by foraging bees has been shown to increase the occurrence of the tremble dance while decreasing the occurrence of the waggle dance.
See also
- Bee learning and communicationBee learning and communicationHoney bees learn and communicate in order to find food sources and for other means.-Learning:Learning is essential for efficient foraging. Honey bees are unlikely to make many repeat visits if a plant provides little in the way of reward...
- Waggle danceWaggle danceWaggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share with their hive mates information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water...
- Grooming danceGrooming danceA grooming dance, grooming invitation dance or shaking dance is a dance performed by honeybees to initiate allogrooming. It was first reported in 1945 by biologist Mykola H. Hadak. An increase in the frequency of the grooming dance has been observed among the bees of mite-infested colonies, and...
- EusocialityEusocialityEusociality is a term used for the highest level of social organization in a hierarchical classification....
- Bee Piping
Sources/Further reading
*Arnold et al. (September 2002) Intra-Colonial Variability in the Dance Communication in Honeybees (Apis mellifera). Ethology Vol. 108, Issue 9. pp. 751–761.- Biesmeijer, J. C. (May 2003) The occurrence and context of tremble dancing in free-foraging honey bees (Apis mellifera). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Volume 53, Number 6. pp. 411-416.
- Dyer, Fred C. (January 2002) The biology of the dance language. Annual Review of Entomology. Vol. 47. pp. 917-949.
- Schneider, Stanley S.; Lee A. Lewis. (2003) Honey bee communication: the "tremble dance", the vibration signal and the "migration dance", in: Webster T. (Ed.) Monographs in honey bee biology. Northern Bee Books, West Yorks, Great Britain. Vol. 1, pp. 1–26.
- Schneider, Stanley S.; Lee A. Lewis. (March 2004) The vibration signal, modulatory communication and the organization of labor in honey bees, Apis mellifera. Apidologie. Vol. 35, Issue 2. pp. 117-131.http://www.apidologie.org/index.php?option=article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/apido/pdf/2004/02/M4206.pdf
- Seeley, Thomas D. (July 1997) Honey Bee Colonies are Group-Level Adaptive Units. The American Naturalist. Vol. 150, Supplement: Multilevel Selection. pp. S22-S41.
- Seeley, Thomas D. (June 1999) Born to Dance. Natural History. Vol. 108, Number 6. pp. 54-57.
- Takeshi, Otani. (2001) Dance performance at very near distance from the honeybee hive. Honeybee Science. Vol. 22, Number 3. pp. 127-138.
- Thom, Corinna. (2002) Dynamics and Communication Structures of Nectar Foraging in Honey bees (Apis mellifera). Dissertation zur Erlangung des naturwissenschaftlichen Doktorgrades der Bayerischen Julius-Maximilians -Universität Würzburg.